A Glass Darkly
by Darkenning
Summary: "Despite everything, despite birthday boxes filled with bones and nine murdered friends - ten if one was being generous - and a world which may or may not be in ruins, she did not bring the bat down a second time." Post-DR, Pre-SDR2, AU.


**Danganronpa: Through A Glass Darkly**

"Your identity has just been confirmed by all three of our DNA databases," the warden blandly informed Kirigiri as the detective dressed before her. "The codes attached to your ID likewise have been triply verified. You will now be allowed to see the prisoner."

_Hooray for me,_ Kirigiri thought as she pulled the gloves back on. Removing them had been the hardest part of the strip search procedure she'd just endured.

The warden wasn't done, of course. "Your activities and words will be monitored at all times. You will have exactly one half hour to communicate with the prisoner. A warning will be issued five minutes before the time limit. Do not approach the barrier separating you from the prisoner. A warning will be issued when you are too close. Do not _contact_ the barrier separating you from the prisoner. _No_ warning will be issued if you do so. Any violation of this facilities rules, as outlined to you in this discussion and in previous ones, will result in lethal nerve gas being pumped into the observation room and the cell. Do you understand what I have just told you?"

"Yes," she said quietly.

"You may proceed to the airlock," the warden said, and gestured for the rifle brigade standing between the two of them and said pressurized doorway to clear her a path.

Once through the first door, the second was relatively easy to open. On the other side of it, she found herself in a dimly lit room with no furnishings, looking at a clear glass barrier. On the other side, in another dimly lit room, there was a bed, its linen almost blindingly white.

And in the bed, handcuffed, smiling at her, pinkish-blonde hair spread on the pillows like a halo, was Enoshima Junko.

"Hello, Clarice," she said. "Have the lambs stopped -"

"Thomas Harris was an exploitative hack," Kirigiri interjected. "It doesn't surprise me that you'd like his work, though."

"I liked him. He went great with croutons and a nice bagna cauda sauce." The girl's tongue dangled from her mouth, waving faintly.

"... I'm going to recommend that they up the dosages of whatever antipsychotic drugs they're feeding you."

The tongue retracted, and a bit of a sigh came from those lips. "You'll have to imagine the glasses for the next part. Any increase in the dosage will probably put me into a coma."

"The thought of that fills me with despair," Kirigiri told her, totally deadpan.

"Heh. Heh heh. It's your own fault, you know ..."

Kirigiri supposed that it was, at that.

_It had been over. The mastermind had been exposed, and the despair that she preached overcome by Naegi's unyielding hope. And even the giddiness with which she greeted her despair at her own defeat had, however momentarily, been punctured by the way that hope had proven every bit as contagious as despair._

"Fine." Enoshima, bereft of any persona, spoke very quietly. "Let me just say one last thing. If you bastards wanna get all hung up on the word 'hope', that's no skin off my nose ... but know this - from this point on, one 'despair' after another will stand in your way. No matter where you run, no matter where you hide ... maybe you'll find some hope, but there is a very fine line dividing that hope from bitter despair." Her face twisted in a sick leer. "Despite that, do you bastards still plan to cling to your hope?"

"Of course!" Naegi retorted. "Because we -"

"It was a fucking rhetorical question, Naegi, don't interrupt my monologue!" she roared. Shook her head. "Y'know, I'm even bored with the monologue." The drooling grin came back. "Let's get on with the punish-"

And that was when Kirigiri, who'd gotten annoyed with the monologue even sooner, smacked her over the head with the baseball bat that Naegi had given her as a present some time ago. In the heat of the moment, as Enoshima collapsed on the floor, Kirigiri almost thought she saw tiny birds circling the other girl's head and chirping sweetly. Ridiculous, of course. Just an indication of how high her emotions were running.

"I don't think you finished the job," Togami said judiciously. "Try hitting her a few more times, just to be sure."

She considered the notion carefully as she hefted the bat.

"No!" Naegi protested. "There's been enough of that, hasn't there?"

She considered that notion carefully too.

And, despite everything, despite birthday boxes filled with bones and nine murdered friends - ten if one was being generous - and a world which may or may not be in ruins, she did not bring the bat down a second time. Instead, the girl who did all that was bound and gagged, and in the end, carried out of the school when the rest of them walked out.

Because there was_ a fine line, and she'd made her choice, no matter what it cost her._

"So," Enoshima asked, interrupting Kirigiri's reminiscence. "What brings you to my humble abode, Detective?"

"I just thought you should know that we've captured most of the remaining Despair holdouts," she replied casually.

"Oh rilly," Enoshima replied, her old fashionista persona surfacing somewhat. "Even Kamakura?"

"Even Komaeda,"

"Oh, there's an accomplishment," the girl who'd destroyed the world said with a disgusted eyeroll. "Is he still going about claiming to have attached my hand to his wrist?"

Kirigiri froze. "How did you hear about that?"

A vague parody of a cutesy expression settled on Enoshima's features. "Ah, Kyouko-chan! Did'oo think you're the only one who comes to give me bad news? Did'oo?" A head shake, and she reverted. "Captured, rather than killed, huh? Am I going to be getting new neighbors?"

"I doubt it," she said, calming a little. "Now that the Impostor's no longer a threat, the security arrangements here may actually relax a little, since they won't have to do DNA testing on every -"

"DO NOT DISCUSS THE SECURITY OF THIS FACILITY WITH THE PRISONER," the warden's voice crackled from a hidden intercom. "THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING."

"Oops," Enoshima smirked.

"Oops," Kirigiri said, smiling a razor sharp smile.

Enoshima actually blinked. "Deliberate?"

"Maybe. In any event, it means that things outside might be finally getting to the point where they'll be thinking about your final disposition."

Now Enoshima actually laughed. "So what you stopped me from doing, they're going to do to me. That's, that's just ... wow, if I didn't already embrace the notion that existence is utterly without meaning, that would do it. What does Naegi think about it, incidentally?"

"He's against it."

"Of course he is. He'll never love you, you know."

"Uh huh," Kirigiri replied calmly.

"Nope," Enoshima reiterated with a shake of her head. "He loved twice, and both of them are dead. Well, I suppose you could say that he loved twice and one of them was a poor imitation of a reality he couldn't handle, which is why you're here and not him."

"If you say so. The truth is, though, I don't need him to love me to work with him. If anything, it would get in the way. I wouldn't expect a narcissist to understand, though."

"And here comes the psychology, at last," Enoshima said cheerily

"Actually, I'm using the term in its classical sense rather than the psychological one," Kirigiri contradicted. "I don't have much interest in psychology, I prefer evidence. It doesn't lie."

Enoshima hummed a bit of music from The Who for a moment, before pressing on. "Is that why you've never bothered to ask me why I did it? Simple apathy? That's a kind of despair, you know."

"I never asked because I know you'd lie."

"Unless I told the truth." Her eyes rolled off of her to gaze up at the ceiling. "And I'm in a truthful mood, really. And the truth ... the truth is I did it because it could be done. Because nobody, in an academy full of geniuses, could see what I was doing, and none of them stopped me. Some of them even helped me along, for whatever reason. The truth is, even I'm a little surprised at how things went ... why else do you think I offered to let them live if they'd just kill you, or to let you live if they'd just kill him? It would have been the end of your hope, but I wouldn't have made you chase despair like I did. I'd have just ... let you be. Left you to your own devices. Probably ended myself a lot sooner ... but you just -"

"Enoshima Junko," Kirigiri interrupted, using her adversary's name at last. "Do you really think it's that simple? Even if Naegi-kun had suffered some sort of failure of will and let me die then, do you really think that they'd have lost all hope? They would have still had to hope that you'd keep your promise. Every day that they were alive -"

"Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, whatever, I was just bullshitting you some more. The truth is I did it out of revenge for experiments performed on me which gave me this inability to feel anything but despair," she confided. "You'll have to imagine the hand in front of my face."

"I might have known," Kirigiri sighed.

"That's despair too."

"Well, I suppose that's about enough time spent shoving verbal daggers at each other for one month," Kirigiri said after a moment.

"Oh, foolish mortal, were I actually shoving verbal daggers at thee, you would indeed be bleeding," Enoshima replied with a trace of her hauteur. "You have to imagine the -"

"Crown on your head, yes, yes, yes, I get it. Incidentally, having seen recordings, I think Tanaka pulled off the imperious bit better than you ever did."

"Descending to insult? Incidentally, I noticed how you never did directly answer my question about whether you've captured Kamakura. You haven't, have you. He's still out there, the only one of them I actually feared ... and you're not sure where he is."

Kirigiri shrugged. "You'll have to wait until someone else comes in to give you that particular piece of bad news."

"THERE ARE FIVE MINUTES REMAINING," announced the warden's voice. "THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING."

"Such a dear girl," Enoshima mused. Kirigiri wasn't sure whether she was talking about the warden or Kyouko herself.

"Togami-kun has expressed interest in a chess game," she said, apropos of nothing.

"He wants white, of course?"

"Of course," Kirigiri confirmed.

"I'd be delighted. I'm surprised you've never -"

"I don't play chess, anymore. It's difficult to do so when you've come to care about the pawns. Also I've already beaten you."

"Have you. Do not delude yourself that this situation is anything more than a setback."

"Hm. Oh ... just so you know, Naegi-kun wants to visit you. I and the rest of his friends keep conspiring to keep him from doing so."

"Ah?" she said, cutesy once more. "Are you protecting him from mean ol' Junko-chan?"

"Yes, actually, because shielding one's friends from unnecessary pain is something people who have friends _do_," Kirigiri answered, before heading to the door. "But also because, despite everything that he's seen in the last year, he's still the same stupidly optimistic person he was back then, and I believe you were telling the truth despite yourself when you claimed that listening to him speak about hope caused you physical pain. And I _don't_ believe in torture. Not even for you."

"Just for yourself," Enoshima said, quietly.

"See you next month," Kirigiri concluded, banging the door to indicate that she was ready to leave.

"Not if I see you first."

She didn't dignify that with a response.


End file.
